My intention is to use traditional Japanese literary forms and materials to create modern stories that are self-consistent, credible and populated by believable characters authentic to their time and place. # I teach fiction writing at the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin. I got my MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea for two years, studied art and language in Kyoto for four years, and worked in Tokyo as a writer and editor for eight years. My published novels are: Sons of the Pioneers, HBJ; A Friend in the Police, HBJ; and Living Alone, Atheneum, all in NYC. A short story collection, The Plum Rains, was published last year by The Liffey Press in Dublin. Non-fiction books, a couple dozen short stories, essays, poems, and book reviews have appeared in digital and print media in the US, Japan and Europe.